So the smartphone has finally breached the Rs 2,000 barrier in India. And it took an Indian manufacturer to tie up with a year-old mobile platform to do it. The Intex Cloud Fx will have a price tag of Rs 1,999 and will be the best bet for a lot of people to access the Internet. The phone has a 3.5-inch HVGA touchscreen which should keep people in this product catergory happy along with the 2G/3G dual SIM support.

The phone will initially be available only on Snapdeal.com, which you might think will prevent a lot of people in the target audience from getting to the phone. But Keshav Bansal, director marketing at Intex Technologies, says the etailer will take the product to 400 towns in India, especially the Tier 2 and 3 cities. He said the company is confident of selling half a million units of the phone this year with their “massive marketing plan”. Intex has presence in 50,000 outlet, 10,000 of which sell their smartphones.

“Our motto is to empower each and every Indian with the latest technology. We must understand that 70 per cent of Indian mobile phone users are still using feature phones and they aspire for a smartphone,” said Bansal.

Intex Cloud FX

For Firefox, this is the first the ultra-low cost model in the world and the first in Asia. Incidentally, Spice Mobiles had announced its Firefox phone, the Spice Fire One Mi – FX 1, on Friday with a Rs 2,299 price tag. However, Jane Hsu, director of product marketing at Mozilla Corporation, clarified that the Cloud Fx will the first phone to start selling in India, available online from today. She said learnings from a diverse market like India will help the company become successful in other geograpies. Hsu said Mozilla was already interacting with all leading manufacturers in India and the OS was open for anyone to adopt.